Although I’m a Democrat, I registered as a Republican in the primaries to vote for Rep. John Curtis. Curtis had done an excellent job as mayor of Provo, and I thought he deserved a chance in Congress.
I was saddened to see that Curtis has drunk the Trumpian Kool-Aid and joined his fellow Republicans in their determination to shut their eyes to any crime committed by the president.
In 1998, Republicans insisted that lying about an extramarital affair was grounds for impeaching Bill Clinton. But in the Trump era, extorting foreign interference in an election and stonewalling a congressional investigation is no big deal. Nor is paying hush money to porn stars to cover up multiple extramarital affairs, demanding foreign and domestic emoluments, defying appropriations laws to build a border wall (remember Republican outrage over Obama’s executive orders?), or discussing national security matters over an unsecured cell phone monitored by Russia (remember Hillary’s emails?).
I can no longer believe that the GOP’s blind defenses of Trump represent honest differences of opinion. As one commentator observed, Republicans would literally excuse Trump for shooting someone in broad daylight on Fifth Avenue. They’d claim that the witnesses to the shooting were all partisan Democrats; that the security camera footage was doctored by the fake news media, that the president’s actions weren’t really a crime since the young woman he shot didn’t die but was only paralyzed and that even if she did die, the president couldn’t be investigated or charged with a crime. (In fact, Trump’s lawyers have already made that argument.)
This is what has become of the once-proud GOP: the cult of a wannabe fascist dictator.
Blair Bateman, Provo